


Half-agony, Half-hope

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: AUSTEN Jane - Works, Persuasion - Jane Austen
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-12
Updated: 2015-01-12
Packaged: 2018-03-07 08:35:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3168422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"If I'd come to you in 2008, when I came back from the Gulf, would you have got back together with me?" In 2014, Anne Elliot and Fred Wentworth talk about where they went wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Half-agony, Half-hope

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dreamer_98](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamer_98/gifts).



> A fandomstocking fic. I had tremendous amounts of fun with this, and really could have enjoyed writing basically any scenario from this AU; Persuasion is my favourite Austen, and all the characters fell into their modern places in my head with delightful ease. But I've always had a soft spot for those quiet, faintly clandestine getting-to-know-you chats Anne and Wentworth have at the end of the novel, so really, it had to be one of those.

            Bath was heaving with people doing their Christmas shopping, as Anne had known it would be, but the only way to get any privacy with Fred - and avoid her father and Elizabeth's childish response to the twin blows of her new boyfriend and Walter's running off with Pippa Clay - was to get out of her father's house and go walking. They wound through the town, Fred cursing the shoppers under his breath and shielding Anne from a boisterous group of tourist kids, half of whom were simply dying to see the Roman baths and the other half of whom were advocating for a trip to the Jane Austen exhibits.

 

            "Fucking kids," Fred said, glaring at a tall girl vigorously arguing in favour of Romans who had just buffeted Anne rather badly.

 

            Anne laughed and squeezed her gloved hand in his. "I won't actually break, Fred, it's fine. Come on, let's go up to the Crescent, it'll be quieter."

 

            "Your asthma?" Fred gave her a worried frown, and added "Oi!" as a shopper shouldered past Anne, knocking her into Fred's chest. Anne smiled into his coat, remembering the shock Fred had betrayed all those months ago when he met her for the first time in years and realised that the chronic asthma that had been quiescent when they were together was now so bad that Anne sometimes had to pause between flights of stairs. He had still been furiously angry with her then, but he had fetched her inhaler, halted walking parties so she could breathe freely, and flagged down the Crofts in their car to give her a lift home. Now that they'd come to an understanding he was even more protective of her wellbeing, a phenomenon which mostly seemed to manifest itself in lending her scarves and jumpers, bringing her cups of tea and getting cross at people who got in her way.

 

            "My asthma will be fine," Anne assured him. "It's better than it was in September. And your temper will be much improved!"

 

            "Ha bloody ha," Fred groused, but he smiled back at her, and took the opportunity to tuck her chunky woollen scarf more firmly about her neck, the roughened tips of his fingers stroking her cheeks very gently. She leant up onto her tiptoes and kissed him.

 

            "Crescent?" she said.

 

            "Crescent it is."

 

 

            The Crescent was much quieter. The graceful Georgian houses curved along the side of the hill, golden Bath stone shining in the sunlight, and the grass of the park was only a little damp. The wind was brisk, but the sky was mostly blue, and Anne thought it a perfect day, especially because Fred insisted in his most guileless, straightforward voice that her jeans would soak through if she sat on the wet grass, and that she should avoid this terrible fate by sitting on his lap. She curled against him and settled her head against his shoulder.

 

            "Your asthma is better," he remarked, one arm wrapped firmly around her waist. "You're wheezing a lot less than you were at Uppercross."

 

            "It hasn't been this good since I was nineteen," Anne agreed. "And we all thought I was growing out of it then. People do grow out of childhood asthma sometimes. I think it's just better when I'm not stressed."

 

            Fred was silent for a second, and Anne knew he hadn't missed the reference to the year they had met and dazzled each other. "When did you realise it wasn't gone?"

 

            "After we broke up. I didn't cope very well." Anne leaned into his touch on her head, his fingers absently turning one of the short dark curls around his thumb the way he had done in 2006, when she'd had longer hair, a prettier face, and a much less realistic outlook on life. "By Christmas I was requesting a ground floor room in halls because it was impossible for me to climb stairs half the time."

 

            Fred's arms tightened around her. "I thought people only got sick over broken hearts in books."

 

            "I just wasn't very good at being my own person," Anne said. "I was stuck with my sisters and my dad, and if I wasn't keeping Mary calm I was trying to stop Elizabeth throwing a tantrum or making sure my dad paid off his credit card balance. I let you hold me up, and when I didn't have you to hold me up any more..." She shrugged and accidentally hit Fred in the face.

 

            "Ow!"

 

            "I'm sure you've seen worse. I've worked in Portsmouth General A&E, I _know_ what you sailors are like." Anne kissed it better anyway. "The only person who really wanted to know what I thought back then was Aunt Theresa -"

 

            "Lady Russell?"

 

            "The one, the only. And Aunt Theresa is a bit... overwhelming."

 

            Fred made an unintentionally hilarious harrumphing noise, and Anne leaned back to see his expression, which was even funnier.

 

            "Don't worry, she'll love you now you're not threatening to seduce her baby goddaughter away from her medical degree and into a life of financially insecure wedlock."

 

            "Right," Fred said, clearly unconvinced, but squared his shoulders and took a deep breath. "If you can forgive her for breaking us up, I can too. All that happened to me was being a grumpy bastard for months and getting ticked off by Sophie for it. What helped you fix yourself, then?" His eyes travelled over her and his hand slid down her back. "You're definitely your own person now. You were amazing with Louisa when she cracked her head on the Cobb."

 

            Anne smiled, toying with the buttons on his coat. "You always had a massive thing for competence, didn't you? That's why you liked my piano-playing so much. Anyway, what fixed it - I moved out and got my degree. That fixed it. Because I got to stand on my own two feet, and nobody else got to tell me what to do, except the odd consultant."

 

            He grinned, as she'd hoped he would, and drew her back into his arms. He was wearing an extraordinarily soft scarf; Anne appropriated a chunk of it to pillow her cheek against, and pressed her nose against the warm skin of his neck. His carotid artery beat a steady pulse under her lips.

 

            "I wasn't planning on moving back, ever," she added, "but then Aunt Theresa got in touch, and Elizabeth and Dad almost lost Kellynch, and, well. I could get into work from Kellynch, and Uppercross isn't much further, and I couldn't abandon them. They're family."

 

            "I'd do anything for Sophie," Fred agreed. "But you can't tell me you weren't bored at Uppercross. You didn't have anyone to talk to but Lou and Hettie, and they're sweet girls, but..."

 

            "You seemed to like them just fine," Anne said dryly, and saw Fred flush. Truthfully, she hadn't been bored in Uppercross, but that was because soothing Will, calming Mary's worries over her new medication and the CBT therapist she normally liked just fine, and preventing the boys from running totally wild and killing themselves falling out of trees had been a full-time job. ( _Another_ full-time job.)

 

            "I wanted to show you I'd moved on," Fred said, low and unusually hesitant, and stroked a strand of her hair off her face. "I wanted to make you jealous. Forgive me?"

 

            "Done," Anne said, and kissed him to seal the deal.

 

            "If I'd come to you in 2008," Fred said several minutes later, when they'd caught their breath, "when I came back from the Gulf, would you have got back together with me?"

 

            "In a heartbeat," Anne said, true words that slid off her tongue like silver, and Fred's eyes lit with a fierce joy that made her heart beat double-time. She smiled dizzily back at him, and cupped his jaw in her hands, smoothing the little lines at the corners of his eyes with her thumbs. He was a handsomer man than he'd been at twenty-three, a handsomer man than Walter Elliot and his sly smiles and sharp legal practice ever could be, and when he looked at her like that Anne felt like a queen, like Athena and Boudicca and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson all rolled into one.

 

            "I love you," Anne said in a rush, words she hadn't said since she was nineteen that suddenly seemed like the most important things in the world.

           

            Fred answered her in kind, and they were both shockingly late to the Musgroves' cinema trip.


End file.
